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Synopsis
Edinburgh, 2025 - sweat city. Global warming has led to strict water rationing. The ruling Council of City Guardians has been forced to become more user-friendly - so citizens now live for the weekly lottery draw. Then people start dying after drinking poisoned whisky, and subversive, blues-haunted investigator Quintilian Dalrymple is thrown into a nightmare case which threatens the Council's very existence. For Quint, distinguishing friend from foe soon becomes a question of life or death. And the body count, like the temperature, keeps on rising...
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Review
Things are not ducky in Edinburgh in 2025. Indeed, they've been far from ducky since the financial collapse of 2002, the crippling global warming, the UK's devolution into so many anarchic city-states, and Edinburgh's embrace of the Enlightenment (the ironic name of their dystopian state, controlled by the Council of City Guardians) and its de facto absence of individual liberty.
On the bright side, crime's down, tourism's up, and the Edlott lottery (a "citizen's" only shot at betterment) is doing land-office business. A pity, then, that recent winner Fordyce Kennedy's gone missing and Frankie Thomson, a demoted Auxiliary Guardsman, has turned up dead on the banks of the Water of Leith. Ironically, Frankie died of nicotine poisoning after sampling a contraband bottle of "Ultimate Usquebaugh." Usquebaugh is Gaelic for "the water of life," or whisky.
Enter Quintilian Dalrymple, Water of Death's noirish, blues-haunted hero, a freelance detective (himself a demotee from the powerful Auxiliary Guard thanks to exploits detailed in 1999's award-winning Body Politic and 2000's The Bone Yard) who's reluctantly tapped by the Guardians when things get deadly. With the help of his Guardsman sidekick, Davie, and the sufferance of a by-the-book superior, Quint is tasked with finding Fordyce, finding Frankie's murderer, and finally, finding Fordyce's murderer after he, too, succumbs to Ultimate Usquebaugh. In the meantime, Quint juggles the professional-intimate relationship he's having with the city's Senior Guardian, Sophia, the reemergence of his ex-lover, Katharine, and the fact that Katharine, Sophia, and countless others are possible committers of the mounting crimes.
Intelligent, breezy, and surely paced, Paul Johnston's wryly humorous mystery succeeds despite its basic whodunit plot. Clever dialogue and likeable (if not wholly fleshed) characters abound, and the near-future setting provides enough diversion and sociopolitical food-for-thought to nicely carry the day. -- Michael Hudson
About the Author
Paul Johnston was born and grew up in Scotland. He now spends much of his time on a small Greek island, but regularly visits the UK. WATER OF DEATH is his third novel to feature the popular Quintilian Dalrymple.
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- PublisherHodder Paperback
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0340717041
- ISBN 13 9780340717042
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages400
- Rating
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Water of Death
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ISBN 10: 0340717041
ISBN 13: 9780340717042
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Water of Death
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ISBN 10: 0340717041
ISBN 13: 9780340717042
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Water of Death
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